NI Expands FPGA-Enabled NI FlexRIO Family for PXI With Six New I/O Modules

06/15/2011

National Instruments introduced the expansion of its NI FlexRIO product line with six new adapter modules featuring FPGA-based reconfigurable I/O to deliver enhanced functionality for general-purpose automated test and high-speed digital communication. The NI FlexRIO family is the industry’s first commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution to provide engineers the flexibility of NI LabVIEW FPGA technology with high-speed, user-configurable I/O on the PXI platform. The new group of adapter modules includes four general-purpose digitizers, a module for high-speed digital I/O and the industry’s fastest 16-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) from Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), which is optimized for modulated communications.

The modules also integrate with the new NI FlexRIO Instrument Development Library, a collection of LabVIEW host and FPGA code, designed to provide capabilities commonly found in instruments such as acquisition engines, DRAM interfaces and trigger logic, along with the associated host APIs. Additionally, the new NI-573xR Example Instrument Driver builds on the code from the Instrument Development Library to create a default FPGA personality and familiar host API for using an NI 573x adapter module as a basic digitizer. Together, these tools decrease the time to first measurement. Both software components are available for download through ni.com/labs.

Unlike other user-programmable FPGA hardware, NI FlexRIO FPGAs can be programmed with LabVIEW graphical system design software and the LabVIEW FPGA Module. This approach helps domain experts to target their applications to FPGAs without requiring VHDL knowledge, while still providing an interface to import existing VHDL code directly into LabVIEW FPGA.

You can learn more detailed information about the new NI FlexRIO adapter modules by visitingwww.ni.com/flexrio.